Research Interests

Together with Roman Wittig, I co-direct the Tai Chimpanzee Project, Tai National Park, Ivory Coast, which currently has three habituated chimpanzee groups with a fourth under habituation, as well as one habituated sooty mangabey group. This is a dynamic group encompassing topics ranging from behavioural ecology and conservation to psychology and health and disease.

Together with my research group, I investigate questions related to the evolution of sociality, social cognition and communication. Using the comparative approach, we use observations, non-invasive hormone sampling and field experiments to address these questions in chimpanzees and other wild primates, including bonobos, baboons and sooty mangabeys. In terms of the evolution of sociality, we examine underlying physiological and cognitive mechanisms that may explain links between stress, social bonds and cooperation, between non-kin as well as kin.

Some current questions of interest:

What triggers in-group cooperation and out-group aggression?

Why do chimpanzees cooperate more than bonobos?

What do chimpanzees gain from hunting together?

What do chimpanzees gain from reconciling?

Why do some chimpanzees adopt orphans?

How much do cognitive demands vary between primate species?

How much cognition is involved in chimpanzee vocal production?

How much does vocal production vary across chimpanzee groups?

ERC Research Group: The influence of early life experience on later social skills in chimpanzees

Social bonding success in life impacts on health, survival and fitness. It is proposed that early and later social experience as well as heritable factors determine social bonding abilities in adulthood, although the relative influence of each is unclear. In humans, the resulting uncertainty likely impedes psychological and psychiatric assessment and therapy. One problem hampering progress for human studies is that social bonding success is hard to objectively quantify, particularly in adults. I propose to directly address this problem by determining the key influences on social bonding abilities in chimpanzees, our closest living relative, where social bonding success can be objectively quantified, and variation in underlying hormonal and cognitive mechanisms can be examined.